WTO to open its doors, if only for a day

LONDON - The World Trade Organization (WTO), the pet peeve of global anti-poverty protesters who accuse it of working in secrecy, is opening up its heavy wooden doors to the public for the first time.

It’s only for a day but after years of having to field charges of aiding hush-hush backroom deals, the Geneva-based UN body is going to town with its Open Day.

On Sunday, 6 September, 2009, the World Trade Organization opens its doors to the public. Having been at the heart of Geneva for over 60 years, we welcome you to come and take a look inside and to find out more about who we are and what we do, the body announced Monday.

The Open Day will offer visitors the chance to meet with WTO staff and to engage with representatives of the membership of the WTO, it added.

And WTO Director General Pascal Lamy added: This Open Day will be a chance to discover the WTO in all its facets - historical, cultural and international - as well as to understand the importance of international trade to the prosperity of all the world’s citizens.

The Open Day will begin at 10 a.m. with a brief opening ceremony and welcome address, to be followed by a short film about the WTO, which will be shown at regular intervals throughout the day.

Food stands will provide an international buffet offering specialities from among the WTO’s 153 member-countries.

All proceeds from the day will go to a Geneva charity Pados, which helps children and adolescents in difficult situations or with behavioural problems.

We are also organising this event in order to send a strong signal that we are part of the Geneva community, a community to which we have been inextricably linked for 60 years, Lamy added.

The WTO is housed in a grand, 83-year-old lakeside building known as the William Rapard Centre, but few other than Geneva-based diplomats, journalists and government ministers visit it regularly.

With one of the most beautiful views in the city, the site embodied peace and stability, says a WTO leaflet.

But international nongovernment campaigners have long slammed the sprawling building as a place where trade deals are struck in secrecy in meetings that are closed to journalists.

In 1999, the left-wing Third World Network described the WTO as probably the most non-transparent of international organisations.

The WTO said Monday activities for children on the open day will include a drawing contest on the theme ‘Draw me globalisation’ and/or ‘Draw me the WTO.’